You've been recently reading about Philip Rosedale's new 3D space audio plus 2D graphics version of High Fidelity, how musicians like Thievery Corporation's Rob Garza are enthused, even how it might even be used for real world social activism and protests. But none of that's quite convincing until you actually hear what I've been writing about.
So put on some headphones, and click Play on the videos in this post. There's a bit of spacial audio quality loss because these videos are on YouTube, but you should be able to hear various speakers walking around, and even use echolocation to have a rough guess where they are on the 2D map, in relation to you.
Notably, the official High Fidelity demo emphasizes its usefulness as an audio replacement for Zoom: Instead of doing Zoom video calls with many multiple (or dozens of) office workers, you can instead create a 2D floor plan of your real office in High Fidelity, and log into that. Then when you are supposed to have a conference meeting, you just drag your icon there on the floor plan, or drag it over to your desk for a one-on-one chat, and so on.
Here's a non-official demo from London City Voices Choir, using High Fidelity as a social hangout
Summary from a choir member on YouTube:
It's pretty good, and has certainly been the nearest thing we've experienced to a "real-life" pub social. Very useful being able to wander around and join (and leave!) different conversations. Can be used in conjunction with Zoom, as long as you remember to mute in there (and stop audio-sharing, if you have been).
And since it's the London City Voices Choir, my next curiosity is: Would High Fidelity's latency be low enough for different musicians and singers in different parts of the world to perform in sync before a live audience in a HiFi server? Because that would be amazing -- especially now, when live in-person performances seem to be a no-go for at least this year.
I've put that question to lead developer Philip Rosedale and will update when I get a reply!
Update, 3:50pm: Philip tells me performances of two or more musicians may be feasible, and it's something they're working on now: "We're testing it. And the performers need to be within 500 miles of each other IRL, because otherwise the speed of light makes it impossible."
Comments